


Balance is my purpose

by NemiWrites



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 18:29:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5550839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NemiWrites/pseuds/NemiWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why did you save my life?"<br/>"I ... saw that your death would have led to a great imbalance in the Force. As a Jedi it is my duty to maintain balance in all things."<br/>Taken prisoner for unknown reasons, a Jedi Healer is part of the spoils presented to the Eternal Emperor. In the confrontation that follows she saves Thexan. Now she is stuck on Zakuul as Arcann succeeds at his second attempt at killing his farther and the death of the monarch threatens to topple the universe.</p><p>(Tags are still in progress, this was stress relief)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Crossroads

Wind chimes ring in her ears. 

Time has frozen. 

She’s standing on the edge of a cliff with the starry void calling up to her and the Unifying Force tugging at her like a soft breeze. 

_ Follow my will. _

She feels the great structure of the Spire beneath her knees, the heat of Arcann’s lightsaber where it’s humming just behind her shoulder blades. There are the soft remnants of the Force from when Thexan had pulled back his brother from striking down the Emperor. Across the walkway she feels those awful eyes watching them in amusement. The two twins about to engage in battle. The prisoner kneeling between the stolen flags and lightsabers of the defeated Sith and Jedi forces.

_ Balance must be preserved in all things. Put your faith in me and I will guide you. _

“I hear you and I follow.”, she hears herself whisper and feels the cool stream of the Force dance around her bound hands.

Time speeds up again as she turns around and raises her still bound hands, the stuncuffs sparking and firing electricity into her outstretched fingers. Her will takes a firm hold of Arcann’s armor and pulls. Twisting her body she throws him clear from Thexan, back towards the throne. His father easily sidesteps to avoid the collision and Arcann slams into the steps of the tall structure, pinned. She holds him there through her will, while his mind thrashes and raves and pulls at her. Her fingers smart with electrical burns and her breath comes hard and shallow, but her will holds.

The emperor doesn’t even turn around as he says something inaudible to his treacherous son and she can feel Arcann slump in defeat under her will, head dipping back to the steps under him. With her own will so tightly wrapped around his she can feel his anger recede back into that deep dark well inside him. He will bide his time until the next opening presents itself. Slowly she pulls back, dropping her still outstretched hands. They hurt.

“Thexan, take the prisoner away. And you, get out of my sight.”

The emperor ascends the stairs to his throne not even sparing a glance at his fallen son, dismissing their sad little cabaret like one would brush aside a cloud of dust.

After a moment’s hesitation, where she fears a new onslaught of violence from Arcann, they all start moving. She lets Thexan haul her to her shaking feet and turn her around, while she hears Arcann struggle to get upright behind them. Those cracked ribs must really smart. She feels his gaze burn into her back as they hurry outside the throne chamber, Thexan having to drag her when her legs won’t work immediately. She isn’t sure why the Force compelled her to intervene or even if it was the will of the Force at all. As soon as she set foot on this awful planet she felt herself dancing around on puppet strings.

Something had shifted, but she suspects she won’t be alive to see what outcome her meddling will have.

Arcann was likely to kill her first.


	2. The Prisoner on Koriban

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set before The Crossroads; how our Jedi meets the princes and eats dirt for the first time.

_ Before _

 

Something was about to happen.

Her first warning was the sudden lack of torture after weeks of constant assault on her physical and mental health. Her second warning came when the Inquisitors stationed outside her cell block hurriedly shoved as many of their belongings as they could into crates and bags. She didn’t bother trying to ask them what was going on. While they enjoyed gossiping pleasantly with each other while torturing the other poor souls trapped in this prison, they would never deign to answer her if they could just withhold the information to annoy her. Instead Aine Kaneton, Jedi healer and current ‘guest’ of the Sith Empire, tentatively pushed her aching body into a sitting position and reached out through the Living Force to see what had the Sith in such a disarray. Immediately her senses were slammed with the roiling sea of energy outside her little prison cell: The bright red stars of the Sith Lords, the shaking dots of their alien slaves and acolytes, the cold islands where droids and warships forced the Force to flow around them. The lords were the hardest to read, burning hot with their internalized hatred, the acolytes were a garbled mess of fear, anger and anticipation for the bloodshed and their chance at glory. 

They were preparing for an attack. Was the Republic on the verge of invading Korriban? Aine pushed down the sudden rush of hope. That was impossible. With the threat of the mysterious interlopers from Wild Space all over Imperial and Republic territory they wouldn’t extend resources on attacking the old Sith homeworld. Extending her reach into the Unifying Force Aine looked up towards the sky outside and gasped. Ships, thousands of them and two dots of light, shining like dying stars. The twin conquerors had come to Korriban. She couldn’t help but be drawn to those blinding presences. She had heard of them, human newcomers terrorizing both the Republic and the Empire for unknown reasons. Or at least none that her captors knew anything about. Curious, she focused on these presences, examining the shape and borders of their influence. However, Aine’s eyes snapped open when one of them pushed brusquely but calmly against her own presence in the Force, forcing her backwards. It was like she had been pushed by a wave that barely noticed her in its way. She allowed herself a moment of panic at that off-handed show of power, before taking a deep breath and letting the Force carry away her fear and doubt.

_ There are no emotions, there is peace. _

If her time had come than she would face her executioners with the dignity of a Jedi. As the ground beneath the prison began to shake and explosions blew debris past the closed doors of her cellblock, she put her life in the Force.

 

The battle in the Valley of Dead Kings raged for two days, while Aine sat in her cell and waited for the outcome. After a few hours it became apparent that her wardens had either fled or joined the battle and she resumed her meditation to keep the hunger and thirst at bay. With her mind open to the Force like this, the pain of her captors and their assailants washed over her like the tides, making it almost painful to maintain her focus. Carefully she drew up the mental barriers she had been taught by her Master during their work in the lazarets on Taris. As a healer she felt ashamed of turning away from people’s suffering, but there was nothing she could do to ease it from inside her prison cell. So she hid behind her mental walls and waited.

She was only interrupted once when she noticed two Sith standing outside her cell, arguing with each other. Both were covered in dust and blood and clearly in need of medical attention. She didn’t hear them through the forcefield surrounding her and she didn’t need to. It was rather obvious that they were fighting about what to do with her. She acknowledged her own emotions for a moment. She was afraid. She didn’t want to die in this cell or on this dark planet, fighting for the Sith of all people. She wanted to go home to Tython and sit down in the archives and not come out for a week. Maybe drink some hot tea while finishing that book on healing techniques used in the Force Wars. 

She took a deep breath and reached for the Unifying Force, far beyond the pain rippling through the Living Force. Another breath and she was calm. Death, freedom, fight or flight. It was all the same to her. The Force would guide them and her in turn when the time came. 

 

Apparently the Force guided them to leave her in this cell to rot. She couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed at that. Leave it to the Sith to...

Suddenly she was knocked on her back, when she felt pain of such magnitude it nearly made her want to claw her own skin off. It was tearing her apart from the inside out. She was dying! No, this wasn’t her pain. This was some other wretched soul. All day some of the most powerful lords of the Sith on Korriban had died and she had barely felt a whimper through her mental shields, but this will was making its agony felt all over Korriban. She couldn’t reach out through the Force to see what was going on, she could barely keep herself from howling and losing her mind. Instead, she fainted.

 

When Aine woke up, the battle was over. She didn’t even need to focus to feel the quiet in the Force or the slithering tendrils of whatever dark power lurked under the surface of this forsaken lapping up all the pain and blood. She shivered, all cold sweat and revulsion. Aine pulled herself upright, briefly checking the back of her head for damage. Some dried blood, a small wound already scabbed over. She must have been out for a few hours at least. While she checked herself for a concussion, she looked out towards the door, beyond the abandoned desks. Somebody was cutting it open; a sluggish red line had almost completed its circular journey. Not the Sith had won the battle then, but the outsiders. Whatever was going to happen to her, was going to happen soon.

She gathered her remaining strength and stood up. She would not face these butchers lolling around on the floor. She might not have received any training for this kind of situation, but she had her dignity. She briefly focused on who or what was behind the barrier. A droid and the two Force users she had sensed up in those ships. She pulled back quickly, maybe quickly enough to not have been noticed.

When the door was pushed out of its frame, she was proud that she barely flinched. Through the red flicker of the force field surrounding her cell she saw for the first time the twin conquerors, who she would later come to know as Arcann and Thexan, the princes of Zakuul. They looked so young, younger than her. The one in black might as well have been a newly knighted Jedi and while his brother was disfigured by a black mask covering all but his right eye he didn’t particularly look like a butcher of millions either. Korriban’s red dust covered their armor and faces and they both carried light sabers, the hilts hanging on their opposite hips. Interesting, they seemed to habitually accommodate each other's presence, even the way they walked towards her cell suggested that they were used to covering each other. Now that the young men ( _ such an odd feeling to see them like this and know that they just destroyed the Sith on their own turf _ ) stood before her she instinctively took stock of their physical health. They were both tired, but not exhausted, their reaction time would barely be affected. The arm and mask looked like new replacements for a recent injury so maybe if she pushed him at those vulnerable spots she could throw him into his brother, dart around them in the confusion and escape. They were both strong in the Force and likely used to countering open attacks with it so she would need to be quick, precise and subtle. Letting her eyes flicker away from the brother in white, she briefly noted that the one in black looked much too calm, mostly uninjured but for his right ankle. To his credit he hid his injury remarkably well, she only noticed it because she know exactly what to look for. Finishing her quick analysis of their injuries she noticed that they had been watching her and that they were fully aware of her inspection. They didn’t look impressed. She almost huffed in embarrassment. Let them think what they would, there was no shame in not being trained for subtlety.

 

Looking back on it, Aine could appreciate that she had no idea what she thinking when attempting her escape. On a signal from the white one, the droid deactivated the forcefield around her cell and she threw herself forward, intending to use the Force to push against the one’s ankle and the other one’s shoulder where she believed his metal arm connected to his torso. She didn’t even make it one step outside, nevermind mounting an assault. With an expression somewhere between disbelief and boredom, the one in white raised his arm and used the Force against her to stop her body mid-movement. She tried to counter but before she could push back she was physically thrown to the ground by the one in black. He easily held her down, with his knee digging into her back and his hands immobilising her arms. Aside from his body weight she was also pressed into the floor by his own use of the Force. In a last desperate attempt she reached for the Force with all her might to break his hold on her, but was stopped by the singing heat of the other brother’s light saber next to her ear. 

“Don’t move.”

Her face pressed into the floor, she grumbled what might have been a curse or her consent. She didn’t exactly know and they didn’t care.

  
After that debacle of an escape, Aine barely resisted as they put her in stun cuffs and dragged her upright. The droid took point, while she was pushed forward by the masked brother, his metal grip on her cuffed wrists tight enough to be threatening. He seemed to deem any further threats unnecessary. That grip along with his presence, all anger and barely restrained violence was enough to keep her cowed. His brother walked behind them where she couldn’t see him but she occasionally felt his awareness sweep over her. He seemed curious rather than paranoid. The hallways were empty but for the occasional unfamiliar droid collecting artifacts. Knowing what awaited outside she retreated into herself again, distancing herself from the lingering agony and the echoing death cries of a thousand dead Sith as best as she could. Their small group picked their way through the corpses, while groups of droids were patrolling the wastes to look for survivors, shooting everything that still moved. It was when she was shoved into a seat on the departure shuttle that she noticed. They took no other prisoners.


End file.
